New Blood

by Gail Dayton

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  NEW BLOOD

  Copyright © 2009 by Gail Dayton

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-6250-6

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-6250-3

  First Edition: March 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  0987654321

  For the “big guys”—Richard, Andrew, Peter, and

  Christopher, gentlemen all. Can’t wait to see what

  mountains you climb, oceans you swim, and

  dragons you slay…

  Thanks again to C. E. Murphy for looking stuff up for me and showing me where to look it up. You’re always looking out for me, woman. Thanks go to my agent, Elaine English, for sticking with it, even when I whined about that third revision, and to my editor, Heather Osborn, for recognizing genius (wink, wink). And always, thank you to Myles for putting up with me and worrying about me when I’m not writing. You’re the best. I’ll take another thirty-something years with you.

  Chapter 1

  He had been searching for a long time. Just how long a time and just what it was he sought, Jax didn’t know. But something, and a very long time.

  There were a lot of things Jax didn’t know. Many more things he wasn’t certain of. Nor did he think he wanted to know them.

  Now, Jax stood in the shelter of deep forest with Crow circling and cawing overhead, and knew he had finally found what he had been seeking over such an undetermined age. She—not it, for now he’d found her, he knew the object of his search was a woman—worked in a clearing of the forest, in a garden surrounding a tidy cottage.

  She was tall and strong, the hoe she wielded biting deep into the earth as she fought encroachment by weeds. Her white-blond hair, the color of a ray of sunlight, was bound into a braid as thick as Jax’s own bony wrist, and it fell past her shoulder to brush the herb plants where she labored. She wore a brown dress, woven of some sturdy fiber, simple shapes sewn together that clung to the womanly figure it covered.

  A faint chill went through him. Without seeing her face, Jax knew she was a beautiful woman, and beautiful women made him uneasy. As did knowing things without understanding how he knew them. At this moment, though he stood motionless and unseen, blending into the shadows of the forest, inside his head Jax was rapidly descending into panic.

  A tiny replica of himself ran screaming in circles, where no one could see or hear. Jax had no doubt whatsoever that this beautiful, terrifying woman meant something, and that same certainty told him he did not wish to know what that was.

  Nor did he know what would happen next.

  The woman straightened from her task and looked up, shading her eyes with a hand as she searched the sky for Crow. Jax faded deeper into the shadows, turning his face so its paleness would not catch her eye. His heart pounded, faster and harder than it had in as long as he could remember. Which wasn’t saying much.

  “I know you’re in there.”

  The sound of a human voice—her voice—startled Jax into looking up. Had it been so long since he’d heard anyone speak? He couldn’t remember.

  She looked straight at him. How? And Lady—she was just as beautiful as he feared. Not young or dewy fresh, but the years and the knowledge made her stronger, more beautiful. Her skin was clear perfect sun-kissed gold, her. mouth wide and generous, her chin stubborn, her jaw square, matching the strength in her arms. Her eyebrows flared like pale crow’s wings over eyes so blue, it seemed a piece of the sky had been stolen.

  Jax wanted to look away, but could not.

  He felt like a maiden in one of the tales he couldn’t remember hearing, mesmerized by the stare of a serpent. A dragon. But he was no maiden—he was fairly sure. And she was certainly—he hoped—no dragon.

  “Did you hear me?” She raised her hoe, gripping it like a weapon. “I said, I know you are there. Come out.”

  He would leave. Go back into the forest and live as he had been. Solitary. Safe. His mind formed the intention, sent messages to his limbs to turn and walk away. Yet somehow he found himself walking forward into the sunlight, and he knew that his life had made still another of those fateful changes he could not recall. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Not for him. Not for her. Not, he feared, for the whole world.

  ———

  Amanusa squared her stance and lifted her hoe as the man walked out of the forest. She did not read danger in him, but. she had not lived this many years without learning that pain and death often lurked behind an innocent face. And this man looked far from harmless.

  He was big, taller than she, which was a rare thing in this corner of the Austrian Empire. Amanusa towered over most of her neighbors. This man was taller yet, broad-shouldered and rangy, with a loose-limbed stride as if he hadn’t been fastened together quite tightly enough. The features of his long narrow face had that same rough, not-quite-finished appearance, but there seemed to be neither anger nor cruelty in them. Overall, he seemed… brown.

  He wore a long brown leather overcoat, almost to his ankles, brown trousers, and a brown brocade waistcoat over a tan shirt. Even his silky neckcloth was a pale, creamy shade of brown. His thick hair glinted red in the sunlight, but despite the hints of russet, it was brown. Only his skin decried all the brown. He was pale, as if he had not seen the sun in a long time, even now, in high summer.

  “Stop there,” Amanusa ordered. She should have bade him stop sooner, farther away, but she could sense no harm in him.

  The man stopped, showed empty hands, and she opened her senses wide, tried to read his mood. She found only confusion and… fear?

  What would a man his size have to fear from a woman.?

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

  Slowly, keeping his blue-green gaze fastened upon hers and his open hands spread wide, the man went down to one knee. “I am called Jax,” he said in a language Amanusa had not heard in far too long.

  She fought back the memories that wanted to rush over her, memories of home and safety, and of terror. How had this man come so far from that place?

  “Whether Jax is my true name or I have another, I do not know. Only Jax. As for what I want—”

  A shiver passed over him. When he blinked, someone else knelt before Amanusa, looking out at her through coffee-b
rown eyes. A shiver whispered through Amanusa as well. There was magic working here. Inside the man.

  “Greetings to you, blood sorceress.” A different voice, bearing only the deep timbre of the man Jax, spoke through his mouth in the same foreign tongue.

  Amanusa shuddered again with a sudden, deep chill.

  “I left my search for an apprentice too late,” the voice said. “I am taken up—but the magic would have swallowed me soon even so. I am left with binding my servant Jax to this task, of finding the next blood sorceress. And so he has.

  “He can teach you what I have given him to teach. He can show you where to find the other things you will need to know. He will serve whatever needs you may have. He is not a bad servant. I do not know that he is a good servant, but he is not a bad one. Now he will serve you, perhaps better than he did me.

  “Listen to the words I have given him. The blood magic must not be lost. I have seen terrible things coming, and the blood will be needed. Knowledge is all very well in its place, but some things are so terrible, so dire and awful, that only the magic borne in blood and bone and flesh can hold them back.

  “I can only hope that Jax has surpassed his usual cork-brained efforts and found you quickly. There is much to learn and little time to learn it. Do not waste a single minute. Honor to you, blood sorceress.”

  As Amanusa watched horror-stricken, the man’s eyes faded from brown to blue and his face slowly filled back up with himself. Jax stared at her a moment, blood beginning to trickle from his nose. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he toppled over onto the comfrey.

  ———

  It was daylight again, nearing noon. And still the man—Jax—lay motionless in her bed, scarce seeming to breathe. Amanusa checked one more time to be sure he did indeed breathe and propped hands on hips. What was she supposed to do with him?

  When he had collapsed yesterday, she’d been sorely tempted to leave him where he fell. He’d frightened her, appearing out of nowhere like that. She could admit her fear to herself, even if she’d learned better than to let it show. But no matter the temptation, she couldn’t have left him there. Not helpless as he was. It just wasn’t in her to be so cold.

  For one thing, he’d been bleeding. For another, there was that strange magic that had crawled out of some depth to possess his eyes and his voice. Amanusa shuddered. Poor man. For all his lean strength and height and handsome face, he had no power against the magic. Woman’s magic, apparently.

  A chill ran down Amanusa’s back at the memory of that eerie voice. She made a warding sign in the air, then spit on the earth outside her door for extra protection. Women couldn’t be magicians. Or sorceresses. Not here. Not in the Grand Principality of Transylvania, part of the Austrian Empire.

  The Imperial Council of Magicians strictly enforced that rule, and Amanusa had no desire to bring them down upon her. She’d never seen their work, but she’d heard whispered tales of women left witless after the wizards’ and conjurers’ inquisition. As long as Amanusa stuck to small magics, the tiny spells allowed women, and denied her thirst for more, she would be safe. If this man and the magic that bound him called the council’s attention to her…

  She had to get rid of him and the temptation that was the knowledge he carried.

  But that nosebleed concerned her, coming on top of powerful magic as it did. She had sworn to tend the sick and helpless. When he was helpless no longer, she would send him on his way. After he explained a few things. Such as why he’d addressed her as “blood sorceress”.

  A harsh caw brought Amanusa slowly around to see a crow walking through the open doorway of her cottage as though it were an invited guest. Amanusa tilted her head, watching it, and the crow cocked its head in seeming response, fixing her with one black beady eye. It cawed at her again, as if asking permission to be there. Amanusa wanted to laugh at herself for such fanciful notions, but couldn’t quite.

  She bowed, gesturing a welcome. “Do come in, Master Crow.”

  And with a flurry of black wings, it flew to perch at the head of her bed. Above the blue-green gaze of the man, Jax. The crow hopped down onto the blanket covering him and absently, the man raised a hand to stroke the ebony feathers of its breast, never taking his eyes off Amanusa.

  “So, it wasn’t a dream,” he said in that same haunting language.

  “You’re speaking English.” That wasn’t what she meant to say.

  His lips twitched in a tiny, hesitant smile that vanished. “So are you.”

  “Yes, but this is Transylvania. No one speaks English here.”

  “Except, apparently, you and me.” He struggled to sit up, setting the crow to flapping until he stilled.

  Amanusa quelled the urge to assist him. He was big. He was inside her home, in her bed, and she didn’t know how ill he might yet be. He hadn’t been armed, which eased some of her worries. At least he was still dressed, though now in shirt and trousers only, with all the buttons unfastened. After wrestling him into the house and the bed, she hadn’t wanted to wrestle him out of his clothing.

  He wasn’t feverish. She’d found no open wounds or obvious injuries to cause his collapse. Nothing other than the magic. The bleeding had stopped soon after she got him inside.

  “How did you get here?” she demanded. “What do you want? Where do you come from?”

  Now that he was awake, the helplessness dropped away, transforming him into a dangerous creature, a man. Aggression was her best defense, she’d found, especially on her own ground. Fear made her angry, and she hid her trembling hands.

  “England, apparently.” He moved the crow gently aside and reached beneath the blanket to button his trousers. “How is it that you speak English?”

  She shook her head. “My questions first. What do you want?”

  Jax gave her a wary look as he brought his bare, bony feet out from under the blanket and set them on the plank floor. “What did I say?”

  “A great deal of nonsense. How do you feel? Any dizziness? Nausea?” His caution made her brave and she dared to step closer and lift his eyelids, searching his eyes for any sign of head injury.

  Things swam past in their depths. Brown flecks appeared in the cool blue and faded again.

  Amanusa held her hand steady, refusing to flinch at the strangeness. She knew enough about magic that it didn’t frighten her. She looked until she was satisfied she had seen all there was to see. Magic haunted this man, held him tight in its eerie grip. She took her hand from his face and stepped away.

  “I didn’t—” He swallowed. “Greet you as ‘blood sorceress’?”

  “Like I said, utter nonsense.” Amanusa turned away to set the kettle on the hearth, kept her hands busy so they wouldn’t shake. Kept her mind busy so it didn’t shatter. She was no blood sorceress. Blood magic killed. It lived on blood and pain and death, and it ate the soul of its user. She would never be a sorceress. Ever. “If you know what you said, why did you ask?”

  He rubbed a hand over his eyes and thrust it into his too-long hair, shoving it back out of his face. “I don’t always—sometimes I remember things that didn’t happen, and most times I don’t remember things that did.” He met her eyes when she looked back at him, his eyes haunted by ghosts of things unrecalled. “The magic… mixes things up.”

  “Are you a magician? A sorcerer or wizard?”

  His bitter chuckle didn’t escape, but Amanusa could sense it there, in his throat, and she wondered at his bitterness.

  “No,” he said. “No magician. Only a servant. Blood servant. Your servant now, lady.”

  He didn’t stand. He slid from the bed straight to one knee, his head bowed. “I am yours. Command me.”

  “Oh for—” A tiny thrill of power sparked through her veins and Amanusa crushed it. She would not become what she hated simply because he would let her. She pushed aside the quiet whisper that said he might understand her fears, that he’d been where she was, that he might be there still. “Get up off the floor. That’s my c
ommand. Sit. Answer my questions.”

  “As you will it.” Jax returned to his seat on the edge of her bed. The crow hopped close and he stroked its feathers again, as if the action comforted him.

  “Why did you call me ‘blood sorceress’?” Amanusa measured tea into the pot.

  “That is what you are.”

  “No.” She shook her head emphatically. “I am not.”

  Jax only ducked his head without speaking. As if he didn’t agree, but wouldn’t contradict her.

  “Why would you say such a thing?” Amanusa poured hot water over the tea leaves and hung the kettle back on its hook, moving it near the fire but not over it. She pretended the title didn’t tempt her as much as horrify her. Think of the things she would know. The things she could do.

  No. She wanted justice, not bloody vengeance. She wanted to set things right, stop the evil from ever happening again. But if in the process, those who’d done the evil paid for… No. She wouldn’t let the wicked things done to her carry the same evil into her own heart.

  “It’s the truth.” Now Jax met her eyes. “At the very least, you have the talent necessary to become a blood sorceress.”

  That was no comfort. Amanusa knew she isolated herself here in the forest, away from people. More so since her mentor, old Ilinca, had died. But that didn’t mean her heart was cold and callous enough to work blood magic. Did it? It had been battered and broken, but surely it wasn’t past mending.

  “How did you get here? How did you find me?” She repeated the questions he hadn’t answered as she smacked a pair of mugs down on the table, grateful for their sturdy construction. She shouldn’t take her temper out on the crockery, even if the man and his words did upset her on so many levels. She peeked at the tea. Almost done.

  “I walked from the station.” The man fidgeted, as if he couldn’t bear sitting still. “I should be serving you.”

  Amanusa waved away his protest. “The train station is fifty miles from here, in Nagy Szeben.”

  “I know.”